Appropedia:Porting formatted content to MediaWiki

Formatted text, or "rich text," including HTML, Word or OpenOffice documents, can be converted to MediaWiki markup, with formatting.

There are a few techniques which are now being trialed. It may be that wikEd is better for HTML files and OpenOffice is better for Word/rtf files (and Word/rtf files converted from PDF).[verification needed]

If you are starting with a PDF document, it must first be converted to formatted text in another application, before it can be converted to MediaWiki: see Help:Porting PDF files to MediaWiki.

In the output, you have to search past the header, sidebar code etc to find the actual content you're looking for in the wiki output. (Just a little inconvenient. Do a search, ctrl+f, for the title of the page, and it should bring you to the start.)

Image links are not converted correctly, assuming you want to convert the embedded images to links. However if the images are all stored in the one folder on the website.(If you want to have the images on Appropedia, make sure the licenses are also suitably licensed before uploading, and cite the source and license properly.)

Magnus' HTML2Wiki Converter requires pasting the HTML (view source of the page to be converted) i.e. doesn't allow using a url. However it converts images without mangling the link.

Advantages:

No need to set anything up.

Converts image links without mangling. (If you want the images actually on Appropedia, see note above.)

Disadvantages:

In the output, you have to search past the header, sidebar code etc to find the actual content you're looking for in the wiki output. (Just a little inconvenient. Do a search, ctrl+f, for the title of the page, and it should bring you to the start.)

Another method is to use wikEd. It may be best to install this on another wiki you only use for this purpose You must install this on the account there, then convert the content there, then paste to Appropedia. (E.g. I use Wiki Species, and a sandbox in my userspace, i.e. User:Chriswaterguy/sandbox - but I don't actually save the page there. --Chriswaterguy 11:05, 23 September 2009 (UTC))

Otherwise install on your Appropedia account - (but does this clash with our new WYSIWYG editor? --Chriswaterguy 11:05, 23 September 2009 (UTC)) you can easily copy formatted text to the edit box, hit [w] ("wikify"), and you're most of the way there.

This seems to work well with HTML - how does it work with text pasted from various Wordprocessors? (I seem to recall having problems with this. --Chriswaterguy 03:35, 28 October 2009 (UTC))

If you want to have the actual images on the wiki page, make sure the images are also suitably licensed (sometimes the text is, but the images are not). Then upload with a suitable name, and use the same name to display it in the wiki page.

If you want to convert the embedded images to links (a good temporary option for some wikis, especially when converting many pages):

If the images are actually from a different domain than the content, then they should be converted correctly to links.

If they're on the same server as the content, the links will display as [[Image:imagefilename.jpg]] (or .png...). However if the images are all stored in the one folder on the website, you can do a search and replace, ( [[Image: for [http://domain.org/images/foldername/ ) either in a Wordprocessor or using the replace function in the wikEd toolbar.

(If this is inadequate (e.g. for dealing with images and references) then we have to work out some VB macro code, we will post everything we know. First need to upgrade and try out the feature. --Chriswaterguy · talk 16:52, 7 February 2008 (PST))

Update: I can't get this function to work in OOO 2.5 for Linux. --Chriswaterguy 03:35, 28 October 2009 (UTC)

In the medium to long term, Appropedia:Rich text editing (i.e. WYSIWYG or some variation on that) might make this easier. There are problems, including fears that this will lead to non-standard markup being entered, and excess use of HTML tags if they are not converted effectively.

FCKEditor is already working well on Appropedia, however it doesn't allow pasting of formatted text (probably to avoid the problems mentioned above).